Friday, August 01, 2008

Locked Up/Out/In...

The RGBP Friday 5.Songbird writes:For some reason, Blogger declared this blog possible SPAM and locked us down yesterday. This morning, we're free to post again, but there was a fair amount of excitement last night among our contributors, who found a dire notice on their Blogger dashboards threatening that this blog might be deleted in 20 days!We requested a blog review, and I posted a request at the Blogger Help group, where I found we were not alone. Many other perfectly nourishing and cromulent blogs got the same notice last night. This turned out to be a very small barricade in our blogging community life, but it seemed appropriate to explore locks and blocks and other barriers this week. Also, I liked the picture of the security team above! Could they be Blogger's Spam Prevention Robots, working overtime?

In honor of their efforts, I bring you the "Lock Me Out, Lock Me In" Friday Five.1) How do you amuse yourself when road construction blocks your travel?If it is going to be a long stop turn off the car. Why waste that gas? Mind you in hot weather we sometimes have to start it once in a while to run the air conditioner. And then we have long discussion (repetitive ones too) answering question about why we are stopped, what are they doing, when can we go...

2) Have you ever locked yourself out of your house? (And do you keep an extra key somewhere, just in case?)Less than a month after I arrived here I locked myself out. A new lock had just been installed and it locked much easier than I realized. It was at that point I learned just how easy it is to break in to this house. There is an extra key in the church office--mind you chances are the church keys would be locked inside the house should the occasion arise.

3) Have you ever cleared a hurdle? (And if you haven't flown over a material hurdle, feel free to take this one metaphorically.)Metaphorical hurdles yep. Literal ones? Not on your life (phys ed was never my strong point on school). The biggest metaphorical one would have been issues around self-concept, esteem and injuries based in a history of being bullied. And it only took 15 years or so! (OK, it may well have taken a good portion of that time to actually start the work...)

4) What's your approach to a mental block?Sit and stew generally. Surprisingly that doesn't help much :) So then I try and leave it alone for a while, let my unconscious deal with it. That tends to work much better.

5) Suggest a caption for the picture above; there will be a prize for the funniest answer!After the budget cuts the Department of Transportation was forced to use more inventive methods of staffing.